Start October off right with a double creature feature! Join Cinema SpeakeasySF for a spooktacular screening of The Evil Dead AND Evil Dead II on October 6th at GAFFTA (998 Market St. @ Taylor St. 94102)!

Marking the 30th anniversary of its release, Cinema Speakeasy is resurrecting The Evil Dead to witness Sam Raimi make movie magic (and history) with a scary small budget, THEN they'll compare it to the Hollywood budget he had for Evil Dead II. The basics are the same: a creepy cabin in the woods, some book and audio recording conjuring evil spirits from beyond, and this dude Ash running around in the woods dismembering people possessed by demons. If that doesn’t raise goosebumps on your arms, then you’re probably the evil dead too.

But that's not all! It's a Drink-Along screening too! Here are the rules:

The Plot. Two things struck me about the celebrated elliptical opening sequence of UP, where the young version of Carl, the protagonist, is shown to age and fall in love with Ellie, who remains dead for most the picture: (1) Despite Pixar's raison d'etre, overloaded digital spectacle, what the company excels at is character portraiture. This tends to be done in the first third of their stories, after which the plot kicks in, and I get bored. Unlike Wall-E, however, UP is mostly about Carl just hanging out in his floating house, talking to this chubby little cub scout stowaway, and befriending some linguistically enhanced canines. All of which makes it the best Pixar film to date. (2) Seijun Suzuki and Pixar know something about generic expectations that Steven Spielberg doesn't. Like all moviegoers, my emotions are mechanized, habituated responses to the levers, pulleys and cables of traditional storytelling. Thus, in abstracto, I'll feel elation on cue when the hero risks it all to save those more unfortunate than he, even if the particularities involve an Aryan saving some Jews (a lesson that can be had from Star Wars' appropriation of Triumph of The Will). These 2 and 1/2 hour-long movies of Spielberg's could be cut down to a few, brief sequences leading to the big crescendo, and we'd all still have the same reaction. Much like Suzuki tends to jump cut over the dramatic cliches in his films, Carl meets Ellie, they share similar interests, yadda yadda yadda, she's dead, now her absence structures our understanding of Carl for the rest of UP. Less flippantly worded: poetic resonance isn't based on word count, nor are genre pleasures.